"Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand--that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us."
~ Annie Dillard, "An Expedition to the Pole"

12 June 2006

Incompatible with modernism?

Dan Green spots yet another example of the type of misunderstanding that unwittingly maligns the modernists:

That Faulkner conveys a worldview incorporating "classical" qualities must certainly be true, but I don't see why this feature of his work makes it incompatible with modernism. Does this mean T.S. Eliot, a self-confessed classicist, was also no modernist? Has our definition of "modernist" evolved to the stage where it simply means "chaotic"? No work that moves through apparent disorder to achieve a different kind of order need apply to the "timeless" club? With modernists, nothing matters?

I'll have more on this later (when I have a bit more time). Suffice it to say that it's good to see muddied ideas sorted out. In discussions concerning modernism and postmodernism, there is a tendency towards sloppy generalizations that blur essential issues of how a work functions in the first place, leaving us with nothing more than rote stereotypes that lead to facile judgments. This robs us of literary understanding rather than adding to it. Better to confess ignorance than to make unwarranted assumptions.

“There are those who maintain that you can't demand anything of the reader. They say the reader knows nothing about art, and that if you are going to reach him, you have to be humble enough to descend to his level. This supposes that the aim of art is to teach, which it is not, or that to create anything which is simply a good-in-itself is a waste of time. Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it. We hear a great deal about humility being required to lower oneself, but it requires an equal humility and a real love of the truth to raise oneself and by hard labor to acquire higher standards.” ~ Flannery O'Connor